


Bad Singing and All

by drugdog



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, M/M, which one wouldn't think applies to joebill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 06:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2337794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drugdog/pseuds/drugdog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not having bullets flying over your head and the constant fear of dying allows for a certain amount of domesticity. Eight aspects of the home life of two Philly men with a relationship that outlasted the war they lost a leg each in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Singing and All

**Author's Note:**

> based off my own post (http://guarneretoye.tumblr.com/post/94983524637/you-could-be-sad-about-your-otp-but-consider-one) because why not

Bill was at the stove with his back to Joe when he walked into the kitchen. He was cooking something in a pan, smelling of ash.

A bruise, dark, somewhere between red and purple, was right on the side of Bill’s neck. Joe sighed.

Before Bill turned to see him, Joe left to go smoke a cigarette- as if it would help his hangover. Joe was surprised he hadn’t smoked up the apartment when he returned.

Bill was scraping something onto a plate.

“Good morning,” Joe said after Bill set down the pan. He wasn’t looking to get his face smashed in, accident or otherwise, too early in the morning.

Bill looked at him, then back to what was on a plate. “Siddown,” he said, gesturing offhand at the table. Joe swatted his ass and went for a glass of water instead.

Joe sat down in front of a plate of burned bacon and eggs that looked drier than any given desert, put down his glass and cigarettes by it.

"Figured you might want somethin’ that ain’t leftover Chinese when you wake up in the morning with a hangover," Bill explained, reaching across the table to take Joe’s pack of cigarettes from beside his elbow.

 _And an apology for all the scratches on my back, I’m guessin’,_ Joe thought.

Joe stuffed a strip in his mouth and rubbed his eyes. “That so,” he said. Crunching it up reminded him of when he was a child, when he chewed up one of his daddy’s cigars, but he didn’t think Bill would beat him for eating his cooking.

When he opened his eyes again, Bill’s were on him, chin propped up in his hand, elbows up on the table. His hair stuck up at odd angles in the back, the front, the sides where it started to fade into skin, and his shirt- it was his, Joe realized, the one that was stretched out and off-white and had ‘Toccoa’ printed out on it- hung low off his neck.

There were more bite marks on the skin there.

Early morning light filtered in from the blinds and spread out, slow, over his skin. It gave him a soft yellowish glow, warm, lighting up the way his eyes crinkled at the corners with a slight smile.

Joe was stuck with the urge to tell Bill he loved him. He ate some of the eggs instead. They were like coal at one part, tasteless without salt or pepper. He didn’t give a shit, not while he was looking at Bill.

That said something big to Bill, apparently. He reached his hand halfway across the table to put it on top of Joe’s.

/

Bill couldn’t sing.

He was tone deaf, off-key, sang too low. Joe tried to list all the things that were wrong with his singing and lost track.

That didn’t stop him at all, especially if Joe was the one in the passenger seat of their car and Bill had control of the radio.

"You know you’re a twisty little girl," Bill sang, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

There was another one. His rhythm was off. Joe looked out of the car window.

"You know you twist so fine," he mumbled and then, in a quieter rush, "twist so fine."

Joe ran a hand down his face. Bill pulled the shit he pulled to annoy him, whether it was singing in the car or telling him he always looked mad about something.

"Come on and twist a little closer, now,"

Joe set his head in his hands. Bill paused in his singing to laugh.

"And let me know that you’re mine…"

 _I’m yours,_ he thought, _bad singing and all._

/

"When your brown boy tells you to put on some fuckin’ sunscreen, you listen, asshole," Bill said. His hands, slathered with aloe gel, pressed on him with enough force to make him wince.

He wasn’t burned. If he was, and he wouldn’t admit it, even if his shoulders were tight and he couldn’t sit up straight without rubbing something raw, it was nothing on losing his leg.

"I’m brown too, jackass," Joe snapped, shifting on the chair he straddled. "Would’ve done it if I hadn’t been so damn tired."

Well, maybe he was burned. His back was lobster red, bordering on a few shades darker. Bill took him down to the beach and, because he had a long day at work and little sleep the night before, Joe fell asleep almost as soon as he set down a towel.

"Fully brown. Visibly brown." Bill squeezed more gel onto his palm and slapped it onto Joe’s lower back.

Joe sighed in pain. “Do that again and we ain’t sleepin’ in the same bed for a fuckin’ month,” Joe said.

Bill’s next touch was gentle and cold, but it still burned. “We both know that ain’t true,” he said. “But I’ll try not to scratch you too much next time, yeah?”

/

Bill always got home late for one reason or another. Joe’d grown accustomed to waiting on the couch for him, and had trained himself to not fall asleep.

Most of the time, anyway. It was hard when watching the news. Joe kept blinking, trying to sort out the flow of monotonous words that slurred in his head.

He closed his eyes, drifting off when he heard a key scraping the lock of the front door. Joe waited to open them. Bill kicked the door shut and stepped over, standing above him for a moment.

Bill dropped on top of him, hitting his prosthetic against Joe’s knee, and made himself comfortable with his full weight on him.

Joe sighed and wrapped the arm not crushed to his side around Bill.

"You’re warm," he mumbled, pressing his face into the crook of Bill’s neck. Bill was more than warm. He was a permanent one-man furnace, a strange, broad-shouldered, weighted blanket.

"I know. Don’t put your fuckin’ dead man hands on me," Bill said, but he settled onto his chest and tucked a hand against Joe’s neck.

Joe snorted and pressed into his touch.

“How was work?” Joe managed, twisting under him to regain use of his arm.

“Wonderful. Best day I ever had.”

Joe weighed his responses to that. “If it’d been a bad day, I was gonna let you fuck me.”

Bill laughed, digging his forehead into Joe’s chest. He could feel the vibrations of it all through his body. “Oh, Joe. That shit was the worst. Think losin’ our legs was bad? That don’t even compare.”

Bill pushed off him, hands on either side of his shoulders. He smiled at him, brow several shades of grey in the light of the TV. Joe shook his head and pulled him down for a kiss.

“I guess I’ll have to make it up to you, then,” he said, breaking away.

/

"I swear to god, Joe, if you don’t put that fuckin’ thing outside right now, I’m steppin’ on its head."

"Have fun reaching it, Gonorrhea," Joe said, lifting the kitten up just enough to piss Bill off. Their two inch height difference had uses other than keeping Bill from kissing him in public. "Come on. It’s a goddamn cat. You ain’t allergic."

Bill jutted out his lower jaw and crossed his arms over his chest. “We ain’t keeping no cat. Damn things smell like shit and fuck whatever they can find.”

"Swell. Could say the same about you. You two’ll get along great.” Joe scratched its head and it purred, squirming in his hands to press into the touch. “How’s Bill Junior sound?”

Bill furrowed his brow. Joe did the same.

"All right. All right, god damn it. A couple nights. Don’t you fuckin’ dare call that thing Bill Junior, neither."

In exchange for keeping the kitten, Joe pretended he didn’t wake up early in the mornings to see Bill with it cuddled to his chest, scratching its chin.

And scooped cat shit, but that wasn’t as important.

/

It was a nice day, warm and bright and blue-sky-ed, not that Joe would admit it to Bill.

"See, this ain’t too bad. You got yourself some ice cream. Got yourself my sweet ass sittin’ next to your flat one."

Joe squeezed Bill’s hand hard enough to make him pause halfway though licking his cone and squeeze back.

Bill got him out of the house on a day when they both got off work early and pulled him off the path to the bar to a Dairy Queen. Then, when they had their ice cream, Bill insisted they go to the park.

Away from the kids, at least. He wanted to spend time with Bill if he had to go out for ice cream, not answer question on question about his leg.

"I do," Joe said. He licked some ice cream off his upper lip and decided, after a look at Bill, that he hadn’t wanted to go to the bar anyway.

/

_look at this one tho. what the fuck is a bone titty_

Joe’s phone had vibrated in his pocket not five seconds ago. There were several messages from Bill, all of them with a meme in the attachments.

He went to work an hour before.

He considered sending him a friendly “shut the fuck up.” His phone vibrated again in his hand. Another message with a tacked-on meme showed up on screen. Joe held the power button until it shut off.

If the house lit on fire and he didn’t text back, it was Bill’s own damn fault.

When it was off and his coworker stopped looking at him from across the room, he smiled to himself, set his phone down, and got up to take a smoke break.

/

Bill tossed a jacket from the balcony of their apartment along with his last bag.

"Take this. Don’t want you catchin’ a cold while you’re out there. Wouldn’t wanna make your mama take care of your sorry ass, now."

Joe flipped Bill off after he caught it. Bill blew him a kiss. He pulled it on, snorting at how tight it was over his shoulders.

“When you get back, I’m gettin’ you out to get a fuckin’ jacket.”

Joe furrowed his brow at him, saying nothing. He tossed the bag in the backseat of his car and shut the door.

Two weeks with his family, two weeks in a house full of folks whose relationship with him was texting once every two months. Two weeks without Bill. Hours on the road without Bill playing his bad music and singing to keep him up.

Joe wondered if it would’ve been a good idea to tell his family he and Bill were going out before he had to visit them again.

He stopped for the night at a shitty old hotel. When he closed the door to his room behind him and pulled off the jacket, he brought it to his nose.

It smelled like old leather, cologne, cigarettes, and Bill. Joe tossed it onto the bed and kicked off his shoes.

He was an ass, a big ass missing his boyfriend after five odd hours of not seeing him.

Joe meant to fall asleep with the jacket on the floor, but he woke up with it against his face, laid out on top of the pillow.

He got to his mother’s house sometime around eight that morning, after pulling his ass out of bed at four to get back on the road. Joe almost regretted showing up as early as he had, because that meant his mom would make a big fuss over how the drive was until his siblings turned up.

She did. Made him toast, too, after she asked how the trip over was, even when he insisted she didn’t need to.

“Have you got someone back home, Joe?” she asked, setting the plate in front of him and sitting down at the table across from him.

Joe nearly choked. It was far from dry, too. She’d slathered it in butter and it still caught in his throat at her question.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, going on before she could chide him for not telling her sooner. “His name’s Bill. Feeds me enough. Don’t do anything that I don’t wanna do. He’s a charmer.”

“Bill,” she said. “You have a picture?”

Joe felt an uncharacteristic blush spreading over the back of his neck. Jesus. He really should’ve told her sooner.

He unlocked his phone and scrolled through his albums until he found one Babe had taken some months back. Bill was pointing at Joe, who was facing away from the camera, smoking, while he winked at it with a wide grin.

He slid his phone across the table and hoped she wouldn’t get confused about operating it.

“Oh, he’s so handsome,” she said. “Where-”

She was cut off by another knock on the door. Joe took his phone back and went to clean his plate.

The next two weeks were spent dodging some questions about Bill, who was a household wonder after his mother mentioned his name, drinking, playing cards with his siblings, and going out on the town.

He also smelled Bill’s jacket now and then, sighing softly into the cracked leather.

It was draining, to say the least. His sister brought her two children along. While they were cute, he found himself wishing Bill was around so they could bother him about his leg instead.

On the last day he was there, the jacket stopped smelling like Bill. Just him and his brother’s dog. He’d found the damn thing napping on it two days before.

Joe sighed and looked through the memes Bill had sent him that he’d saved onto his phone when he stopped at a red light on his way home from work. He wanted to call, but there was no service in the house.

The ride home was quicker than the way there, and he was too excited, palms cold and sweaty, heart jumping in his chest, to stop and spend the night at some other hotel.

Bill must’ve heard the car in the lot below the apartments, because he met Joe in the hallway.

Joe leaned down and kissed him, dropping one of his bags to thread his fingers through his hair. Bill wrapped his arms around his neck, pulling back to grin at him.

“You get any rips in that thing?” he asked, tapping Joe’s shoulder.

“The jacket? No.”

Bill picked up the bag Joe dropped and led him in. The cat weaved herself around Joe’s legs, mewing.

“She was lookin’ for you,” Bill said, tossing the bag onto the couch. Joe threw the other ones along with it and let Bill tug the jacket off his shoulders. “Wouldn’t shut the fuck up and stop scratchin’ the door, even when I gave her some milk.”

“That so,” Joe responded, looking around the apartment and scratching the back of his neck. He’d missed it. Missed Bill.

Bill stretched out his jacket in front of his face, and Joe let a half-smile slip when he smelled it.


End file.
